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Quotations by Joubert, Joseph
Be charitable and indulgent to every one but yourself.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
(Attributed)
Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou, Treasury of Thought (1884 ed.).
Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838)
Grace is beauty in action.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838)
Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Alt. trans.: "Words, like eyeglasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
To teach is to learn twice.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
It seems there is something spiritual in wine.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
When I had the strength, I did not have the patience. I have the patience today and I no longer have the power.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Questions show the mind’s range, and answers, its subtlety.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
I love to see two truths at the same time. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
God made life to be lived and not to be known.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
A person who is never duped cannot be a friend.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them?
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Do not choose for your wife any woman you would not choose for a friend if she were a man.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
I don’t like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Half myself mocks the other half.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [ed. Auster (1983)]
Pensées (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Alt. trans.: "The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress." [tr. Paul Auster (1983)]
It is an element of all happiness to fancy that we deserve it.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Nations love dangers, and when there are none to be found create them to fill the want.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Perhaps we need, for worldly success, virtues which make us loved and vices which make us feared.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct; and although themselves blind, are protective. They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, # 138 (1838)
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "Maxims are to the intelligence what laws are to action: they do not illuminate, but they guide, they control, they rescue blindly. They are the clue in the labyrinth, the ship's compass in the night."
Chance generally favors the prudent.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, # 147 (1838) [tr. Atwell]
Variant: "Chance generally favors the prudent man."
Justice is truth in action.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, # 203 (1838) [tr. Attwell (1877)]
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, # 261 (1838) [tr. Attwell (1877)]
(also attrib. Carolyn Coats)
Never cut what you can untie.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, #1797 (1838) [tr. Collins (1928)]
Alt. trans.: "Don't cut what you can untie." [Notebooks, ed. Paul Auster (1983)]
All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, #1806 (1838) [tr. Auster (1983)]
A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist
Pensées, #1809 (1838) [tr. Auster (1983)]
